Well, the 13th GE has just concluded. It has been an interesting election and as I predicted, no one party is going to get 2/3 majority in Parliament. It is one of the worst performance by the ruling regime. Winning only 86 seats compared to Pakatan’s 80 seats in Peninsular is a big shame to PM Najib. If not because of Sabah and Sarawak, he would have lost. He is running the government with simple majority and only gaining 46% of the popular votes! It affected him so badly to the extent that he had to bring up racial issues to back his reasons for the lost. Frankly, Najib was definitely a better leader than Pak Lah but he underestimated the intelligence of the Malaysian population. He thought that throwing money, running some fancy slogans and advertising all over the place with his 1 this and that could get him votes but he failed. People are not interested in money and slogans anymore as they know that it is a political stunt. Giving help to the people is the responsibility of all ruling government. BUT, he never addressed the real issues that people wanted him to address.

People were more interested on how he wants to tackle corruption, cronyism, rising cost of living and economy. He did well in the economic part but failed to address the first 3 issues. A clear corruption involving a CM was not acted upon. In fact he even diverted the question when was asked by the AlJazeera interview. He needed the state’s seats so badly that he failed to act against the CM. Throwing some BRIM, KRIM etc is not going to solve the “rising” cost of living issue. His manifesto was a copycat of Pakatan’s. He refused a debate with Anwar but attacked him from the back by using all the media. That was uncalled for and moved a lot of fence sitters to support the opposition. The media was misused to the maximum to the extent that I wanted to vomit every time I accidentally on the TV or MSM newspaper!

Racial issues were played right from the beginning. Mind you, it was NOT the opposition who played the racial issues. They moved as 1 solid block with no racial or religious issues. It was MCA and UMNO who were playing the issues. BUT, now they blame the Chinese for supporting the opposition. This is a democratic country and every citizen has the right to vote for anyone. Secondly, the real analysis clearly shows that it was NOT a Chinese Tsunami which our PM prematurely said. It was more of an Urban-Rural divide and a class divide. There were Malays who won in Chinese majority area and vice versa. In fact, this scenario worries the ruling government as it spells the end of race based politics. That is what they are worried about. The Chinese only constitutes 3.3 million voters but Pakatan received 5.6 million votes. Even if 3/4 of Chinese voted for opposition, where did the balance of 3.1 million votes came from ? How can Pakatan get 51% of the votes without the support of the Malays?

We should move forward and not backward. Race based politics should end and we should move on as Malaysians. So, it looks like the entire 1Malaysia slogan by PM is just a political gimmick! He expects the non-Malays to vote for him after endorsing Zulkifli Nordin and Ibrahim Ali to contest under UMNO (was it Chinese who voted them out?)! What saddens me the most is the fact that there are many so-called “educated” people who believe in these type of racial issues and numerous conspiracy theories of “so and so” wants to take over the country etc etc. They rather vote for a corrupted leader just for the sake of “demi bangsa, agama dan negara” ! Why is it that only UMNO can protect the Malay rights? Why not PAS or PKR ? These are also Malay majority parties. I still don’t understand how a population of 25% and a so-called racist party(DAP) which is contesting only 51 seats ( NOT all Chinese, BTW) can rule the country where the police, army and civil service is almost 98% Malays! To change the constitution, you need 2/3 majority! Another conspiracy theory is Christianisation of Malaysia !! Malaysian Christian population is only 9% and they are supposed to convert 60% of the population!! Are you saying that your faith is so weak? Please think logically. If you want to believe in conspiracy theories, it will never end!

I don’t blame these people as they have been brainwashed by the ruling government right from younger days. Dr M created Biro Tatanegara for this purpose and it seems to have worked very well. However, I salute the many younger people and urbanites for voting against corruption, cronyism and racism. I also salute Penangites and Selangorians ( of ALL races) who, despite all the money and negative adverts thrown at them, voted for a proven clean and good governance. No religion teaches you to condone racism but yet there are people who claim they are Muslims but full of racism within them. This includes some who I thought were my friends. It saddens me but atleast I know their true colours, now.

It is unbecoming of a PM to issue a statement like “Chinese Tsunami” on international TV and condoning Utusan’s racial headline. To my friends who support racism, I am sorry than I may have to unfriend you in FB. And for those who claim that certain party will sell Malaysia to neighbouring country, please see who is buying all the land and high-end properties in Johor ?

With the election over, I will go back to my writing on medical issues………………..

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I am writing this piece in the early hours of 5/05/2013, the most interesting, challenging and the most exciting election day that I have ever witnessed since I started voting in 1995. It has been a wonderful election campaign. At the same time, I hated watching TV and listening to radios over the last 2 weeks. It is SOOO one-sided with full of garbage. Listening to Najib promoting himself on radios every 5 min is rather irritating. You want to be fair, you should give equal space for the opposition. This is one of the reason why you notice tens of thousands of people going for Pakatan’s ceramah. They want to listen to the other side.

I attended at least 4 Pakatan’s ceramahs just to listen to them and see what they had to say. I must say that they were very professional, talk only on their policies and NEVER brought up any racial or religious issues. Most of the speakers were well educated and could articulate their policies very well in different languages etc. On the other hand, I am sad to see BN and UMNO using racial sentiments to create uneasiness among the population. The Star has been advertising on Hudud, PAS and DAP almost every day on every other page! Rather irritating and I felt like throwing it into the dustbin! UMNO has been playing around with the same old crap of May 13th! Sadly, we have many people who still believe on this propaganda like Chinese taking over the country, Hudud implementation, Christianisation of Malaysia etc etc. I am sure many who believe this propaganda do not understand how our constitution and Parliament system works! Without 2/3 majority, no one can change the constitution. With DAP contesting 51 seats, PAS 72 and PKR 99, no one party can have the majority.

A well-educated person can definitely think rationally. Unfortunately again, I was mistaken. Many people has been brainwashed since young. One thing that this election thought me was the fact that people who you thought were your good friends are not what they seem to be. I got no issue of you voting for anyone. I have had friends who have voted for both BN and opposition from those days. In fact, I was once a BN supporter myself as my father was a strong MIC man, who was once the Vice Chairman of MIC Negeri Sembilan. My father left MIC in early 1990s when he realised that MIC and BN became corrupted and not interested in helping people. Only now I realise that no matter how close you are and how well you trusted your friends, they had their racial sentiments in their heart!  They still do not accept you as a Malaysian but rather as an Indian/Chinese who is a pendatang who should be gratefull to BN/UMNO for giving you a place to stay in this country. This is a democratic country and we have the right to choose who we want. Just because we choose the opposition for a check and balance system, does not make you a traitor!

Whatever the result of this election today, we should move on. I just hope that there will come a day when we can call ourselves as  MALAYSIANS and not by any other race. I hope to see that happening before I go 6ft underground………………

I can only say that 1Malaysia is just a propaganda!

Please vote wisely………………

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Well, I have been busy following the election campaigns all over the country. It is all about election wherever you go and in cyber-world. I just  came back from Singapore after attending a Diabetes Summit over the weekend. Even there, people are talking about our election. Many of the Malaysians who I met at the summit were also talking about election. This is what you call election fever, which only occurs once every 5 years.

There is one difference that I am seeing in this election. This will be my 5th election that I will be voting. The one difference that I see is the eagerness of every registered voter to vote! I had never seen that before. Each and every person who I met is going back to vote. I have friends from Singapore , Sabah and Sarawak who are coming back to their hometown to vote. Previously I had many friends who do not vote. When I ask them why, their answer will always be ” Why bother, BN will win anyway!”

I think the 2008 election changed everyone’s perception. What people thought is impossible became possible in last election. BN was denied 2/3 majority for the first time in history. I feel this had made many people to realise that no matter how big you are, you can fall one day! Thus, in this election everyone wants a change and going for a change. Whether it is for good or bad, remained to be seen but you will never know till you have tried.

We have 6 more days for voting. Wether this be a history in the making or will remain status quo, will be known on 5/5/2013. Whatever happens, we should accept the result and move on. I believe in 2 party system and no one party should be given 2/3 majority. MCA has been playing with the hudud and PAS issue in their newspaper on a daily basis. Pathetic! Pas is only contesting 71 seats which obviously they will not win all. How the hell are they going to change the constitution? I leave the readers to ponder upon!

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Well, 5th of May 2013 will be the day Malaysians will decide on their future. Since I started voting, I feel this is the longest time taken to conduct an election after dissolution of Parliament. Why? From what I gather, the caretaker government is running scared and are not confident of winning. In fact, I had a policeman who said that if the election is conducted clean, the current caretaker government will fall.

I thought of taking a break from writing about medical issues as the election fever is picking up. The whole mess that this country is facing at the moment is purely due to mismanagement. We are a very rich country and should have progressed way ahead of many other countries. We were better than Korea and Singapore in late 60s and early 70s. In fact, out growth rate in 1970s were higher than anytime after that, despite oil production starting only in late 70s. This is what I call ” The Curse of the Black Gold” ! When we have oil, we forget to develop any other field and try to survive on oil money. What happens when we run out of oil? Despite producing oil, we are a nation with one of the highest debt, reaching almost 55% of our GDP. Why is that so?

We are producing youngsters with instant debts, the moment they leave the university. WE could have easily built more public universities and give subsidised education to everyone irrespective of race or religion. BUT we didn’t. We still have the only race based university in the world (UiTM) but yet shouting 1Malaysia slogan everyday. This very university is funded by public fund aka taxes paid by the citizens of Malaysia of every race. Rather than throwing BRIMs, KRIMs etc etc, why can’t we use this money to pay the PTPTN loan and get our youngsters out of debt! Our cost of leaving is increasing day by day. I can buy an item from eBay, amazon.com and other online stores much cheaper than buying in Malaysia ( including postage)! Doesn’t it look funny? The answer is simple: monopoly and cronyism.

When there is monopoly and cronyism, cost of living will increase. It happened to Russia before and that’s the reason Soviet Union collapsed. It’s socialism and capitalism together! When Penang and Selangor government stopped the leak, they made a tremendous amount of money. The leakage is everywhere due to cronyism. Those who are in medical line in government hospitals will realise that almost ALL drugs are now generic drugs and not the original. The reason given was that it is cheaper and reduces the government’s cost. Unfortunately that is not true. I am sure everyone knows that for all purchases made by government sector, it has to go through a “bumiputera” agent aka UMNO crony!. What this agent does is to sign the forms and transport the drugs from point A to point B. Wholah, the commission is 10% of the total drug price supplied. So, if the total drug price is RM 1 million, he earns RM 100K instantly without doing anything but just signing papers. This is the system created by Dr Mahathir to make instant millionaires among the Malays to compete with the Chinese millionaires, which only backfired later.

Now, the 10% I wrote above is the commission for original drugs. Do you know that the government is buying generic local made drugs for the same price as the original? These cronies are now supplying the generic drugs for the same price as the original, making almost 100% profit!! That’s the reason, the MOH never manage to reduce the total cost despite getting generic drugs! Who suffers at the end ? The RAKYAT as they are getting inferior drugs which most of the time does not work. The doctors in government sector can’t do anything as the decisions are made at the top!

That’s why I believe in what the opposition is trying to say. If they can stop these leakages, we will save tonnes of money which in turn can be channelled to education . By eliminating the “middle man” syndrome, we can reduce the cost of leaving. Of course, this is a difficult task as many of these people are UMNO cronies who need UMNO badly to survive. They will throw all the money they have to sponsor the election campaign in support of BN. Read the book written by Barry Wein on Mahathir tilted “Malaysian Maverick” . How Mahathir created the mess we are in, is clearly stated in this book. I also read “Doctor in the House”, the autobiography of Dr M. I feel the title of the book should have been ” Me and the Malays” . From beginning till the end, it is all about him and the Malays with no mention of the contribution of the non-Malays to this country. Despite bringing physical development to this country, he destroyed it internally.

Well, I will stop here for the moment. As the election comes closer, the country will get heated up. Every single person who is a registered voter should come out to vote. A change might be needed to put things back in place. If we don’t like it, we can always change back! That is what you call ” 2 party system”.

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So, the fun begins…………. After weeks of anticipation, our PM has finally announced the dissolution of Parliament, today. His face did not look happy tough! Never in the history of this country, any PM has waited for more than 5 years to call for an election. Co-incidentally, today is also my 14th wedding anniversary with my beloved wife.

This would be the toughest and the most interesting election ever. Looking at the strategy that are being played by the opposition, I must say that they have planned it well. You can throw all the money that you have or control all the mainstream media but the people are getting smarter. A war is won by people with strategy and not money or numbers. Racial politics should GO. In this new era and new generation, there is NO place for racial politics. Anyone who is in need should be helped irrespective of what race he is.

Every single vote counts. I hope each and everyone who is a registered voter would exercise your duty to this country. It does not matter who you vote BUT make sure you vote and please vote wisely. It is for the future of this country. Every registered voter should come home to vote irrespective in which country you are in at the moment. The date of election will be announced soon within the next few days. You will have an ample amount of time to make necessary arrangement.

Vote with your brain and not with your emotion. Open your eyes and see the truth. Listen to both side of the stories and NOt what is being portrayed  in the mainstream news ( TV 3 suku etc etc). The era of internet has made this possible. I support the 2 party system which will keep the government on their toes. I also feel that we should not keep any one party in power for too long.

Let the  FUN begin………………………

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It has been 13 days since I wrote my last post in this blog. I was quite busy over the last 1 week, both at work and at home. I started my journey back to my home town Seremban on 12/11/2012 5pm, after completing my clinic. Luckily I could get a locum to cover me till 15/11/2012. Celebrating Deepavalli with my parents and all my siblings is an event that I always look forward every year.

Unfortunately, I developed URTI the very day of Deepavalli which I am yet to recover from. Two days later I developed Conjunctivitis but despite this I still had to work from 16/11/2012 (Friday) as no one else could cover me. That’s life!

The 2nd day of Deepavalli was the day the medical fraternity was shocked with news from Putrajaya. I was flipping through The Malaysian Insider on  my phone at around 8pm while I was in my aunty’s house when I came across our DG’s news. An immediate call to my friends in KKM confirmed the story and I posted it in my Facebook which received quite a bit of comments. It is a very sad day indeed for our medical fraternity when the top most doctor in civil service appears in the news for the wrong reasons. Since our new DG took over the office in March 2011, many changes took place in MOH which I have posted many times in this blog. New rules and regulations were introduced which annoyed many people and caused a lot of dissatisfaction among the MOH doctors. New rules such as compulsory rural postings for specialist, removal of 6 months backdated specialist allowance upon gazettement, a waiting period of 2 years for subspeciality training, bonding after subspeciality training, housemanship shift system, KK shift system etc etc did cause a lot of uneasiness among the MOH staffs. I was told that even the nursing division and  a lot of staffs in MOH were not happy with him. This is mainly because he makes unilateral and impromptu decisions without much consultations. Everything has to go through him! Having spoken to him when I was a SCHOMOS Chairman of Johor and him being the State Pengarah in 2004, I know exactly how he makes his decisions. In the speech given by our Ex-DG during the MMA AGM 2012 , it was very obvious that our new DG was more politically inclined.

Being such a person will create a lot of enemies who will always look out for your weaknesses (as our Ex-Minister). Everyone in MOH knows his weaknesses. I am sure he was spied upon for a long time till THIS news appeared few days ago. As you know, he has been suspended till SPA decides on the type of  disciplinary action that will be taken. Being a top public office bearer, he has to be responsible for what he does.

I am quite sure a new DG will be appointed soon. I am not sure whether all the new rules and regulations that was introduced by this DG will be removed. Only time will tell but it will go down in history as the DG with the shortest term.

Meanwhile, my battle with a virus carries on……………

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I just received info that our DG is going to go ahead with the plan of opening up 1Malaysia clinics for GPs. The pilot project will be conducted at Kg Kerinchi 1Malaysia clinic. GPs who are interested will be paid an allowance on an hourly basis. This issue was first published in The Star , April this year . I was informed that there were mixed feelings towards this but MOH is going to go ahead with the plan. I am sure many knows that the offer for private GPs to work in Government clinics has been implemented since mid 2000. However, the response was poor  despite the government paying RM80/hour with certain limitation of total number of hours. I know a few GPs and freelancers who took up the offer and end up earning more, with less work ( no administrative work) compared to the permanent MOH MOs.  This caused a lot of frustration among the MOH doctors and thus some conflicts happened. The criteria for the private doctors to get a post depends of vacancy at the respective KKs. With most of the KK’s post are filled nowadays, the chances for GPs to get a post is almost nil.

Thus, now the government is trying to use the 1Malaysia clinics to entice GPs to work for the government. It is a Catch 22 situation. If the GPs are not keen, then the government will say that the GPs are money minded  %^&* with no social responsibilities. If a GP take up the offer, he/she will be cursed by the rest of the GPs in that area! The rest will accuse this GP as trying to attract patients to his/her clinic etc etc.

I was also told that the government is planning to introduce a system where some chronic diseases will be passed to the GPs to manage. I presume he is talking about the impending 1Care system. The first chronic disease will be Hypertension. I have a feeling that this is to test the ground or a prelude to the introduction of 1Care system, which is being planned for 2014. For a beginning, the government may pay a fee for each patient but the patient may need to collect the medicine from the nearby government clinic pharmacy.

Well, as I have been saying all this while, many things may change along the way within the next 5-10 years. BUT no one knows for sure what is in store. There are many doctors who are staying put in government service and there are also a few who are rushing to open up a clinic, hoping they can become a panel for the impending 1Care system. Who has made the right choice is difficult to say at this moment. Whatever it is, life is not going to be easy for doctors in the future. You may still earn a decent living but don’t expect a luxury life or a return of investment.

I will be giving a talk for SPM students this Saturday 27/10/2012 12pm at SRJK(T) Permas Jaya on what it takes to be a doctor, life as a doctor and future prospect. Those who are in JB are welcomed. It will be in English, though I may mix some Tamil depending on the audiences.

Sayonara……………

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Today, I received an interesting referral letter, not from a doctor but a pharmacist! The letter was actually directed to a government hospital but the patient decided to come and see me.

It is interesting to see that a pharmacy can treat patients and even write a referral letter to the hospital !!. According to the patient, they saw a “doctor” but I don’t see any doctor’s name in this letter. Only a pharmacist has signed the letter. I presume the pharmacist was wearing a white coat and thus the patient thought he or she is a doctor. The pharmacy has been prescribing medications for this patient over the last 1-2 weeks and decided to refer to the nearest government hospital with a plan : “provide a brain scan (MRI)”. I also like this sentence ” cluster migraine without etiology“.

The issue of pharmacists acting like doctors has been going on for a long time but unfortunately the enforcement is really weak. Even though raids are conducted but very minimal. Pharmacist is not allowed to diagnose, do investigations and treat patients. Their job is just to dispense medications on doctor’s prescription and to explain the side effects of the medications. They also act as  an adviser to the doctors in terms of dosages etc. I have seen pharmacist who even conduct routine  blood sugar, HBA1c and BP monitoring for patients. They even adjust medication dosages and prescribe new medicines, taking over GPs work.

I can only see this situation getting worst as pharmacist are also learning to survive. Soon, they may even employ our jobless doctors to work with them as an adviser! Who knows? anything can happen in this bolehland……………….. I am going to send this letter to MOH and see what action they are going to take.

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